Three Indiana University-led innovations have been awarded patents in the past two months from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:

• RNAi insecticide for mosquito control: The developers are Molly Duman Scheel, the Navari Family Professor in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at the IU School of Medicine-South Bend, and Kathleen Eggleson, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the IU School of Medicine. Mosquito-borne infectious diseases kill more than 1 million people every year. Due to increasing resistance, some current insecticides are now rendered useless in fighting against diseases like Zika virus, yellow fever and dengue. The novel RNAi insecticide developed by Scheel and Eggleson is effective at killing juvenile mosquitoes, preventing their maturation into reproducing adults that spread disease-causing pathogens.
• Depth estimation method to reconstruct 3D images: The developers are David Crandall, the Luddy Professor of Computer Science and director of the Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center, and Md Alimoor Reza, a former postdoctoral associate at the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering in Bloomington. Current methods of reconstructing 3D images require identifying a large amount of image data, while Crandall’s and Reza’s depth estimation method uses machine learning to reconstruct a 3D image from a single or small amount of 2D images. The method also enhances the accuracy of the 3D scene reconstruction by diagnosing errors.
• A method of producing sensors to detect analytes: The developer is Amar Flood, a professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. Flood designed highly sensitive, selective and reproducible sensors that identify analytes, or a chemical substance subject to chemical analysis, based on characteristics like molecule size, shape and charge.

These innovations were disclosed to the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office. Innovations disclosed to the office belong to Indiana University. The office files patents to facilitate commercialization of the innovations, bringing technology from lab to market for public benefit and global impact.